Expression levels of serum interleukin-8 in patients with chronic hepatitis C and the changes after antivirus treatments

Objective To investigate the expression levels of serum interleukin-8(IL-8)in patients with chronic hepatitis C and the changes after antivirus treatments.Methods The serum levels of IL-8 in 74 patients with chronic hepatitis C and 30 controls were tested by sandwich ABC-ELISA assay.Thirty six patients were treated with PEG-interferon and ribavirin.The titers of IL-8 in patients were compared before and after antivirus treatments for 12 weeks.Results The average level of serum IL-8 in chronic hepatitis C patients were statistically higher than that in healthy controls(42.95±50.00 pg/ml versus 11.06±1.39 pg/ml),(t=3.4831,P=0.0007).After treatments,26 patients whose HCV RNA had turned negative in response to antiviral treatments also demonstrated a significant decrease in their average IL-8 titer(from 41.29±28.65 pg/ml to 23.15±10.58 pg/ml),(t = 3.76,P = 0.001),while the change of IL-8 levels in other 10 patients whose serum HCV RNA remained positive was not statistically significant(from 43.79±18.60 pg/ml to 42.38±18.00 pg/ml),(t = 1.04,P = 0.32).Conclusions Expression levels of serum IL-8 in patients increased compared with healthy controls,which indicated a role of IL-8 in the pathology of chronic hepatitis C.Antiviral therapy could decrease the serum IL-8 levels in responsive patients.The causal relationships between persistently elevated serum IL-8 and failure of antiviral therapy will be discussed.